


Refined Ink

by Your_Narrator



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Dad Jokes, F/F, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24155929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Your_Narrator/pseuds/Your_Narrator
Summary: Hey, no real summary for now! This is a test chapter for an AU I've had in my mind for a while, an AU that involves my own version of an Ink Demon! So please read this and let me know if you like it!!
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	Refined Ink

Dark. It was all dark. For a moment, Henry thought he was staring at the back of his eyelids, yet when he opened his eyes it was still nearly pitch black. He couldn't see his hands, his body, or any part of himself for that matter; all he could see was a slit of light above his head that sliced towards the wall opposite of it. The light was gold, almost comforting, and Henry pushed himself up to look through it.

He heard his own clothes crinkle below him as he gazed through the slit, finding a world behind it.

Everything was either black, gold, or brown, but more importantly it was all  _ outlined _ . Like some kind of three-dimensional cartoon, every object, item, wall, and beam had deep black outlines that followed their edges, causing the rest of the hues to stand out against them.

"... that's not normal," Henry decided.

Henry did recognize the area, though. It resembled Joey Drew Studios, back when he used to work there. He saw the long table that he used to stack sketches on, the curtained wall that held the company's logo, and even the sign for the different departments peaked out from behind the corner some distance away. However, he couldn't see much else, as the slit he gazed through was too small.

"Looks like a mail slot," Henry determined, "Hope I arrived on time."

But besides that, if it was a mail slot, that meant he was leaning against a door! Reaching up, Henry started feeling around, hopeful to find a doorknob, but something else caught his attention.

A clicking noise. A very distinct clicking noise, like a shoe against the floor. Henry's brow furrowed in confusion at the sudden spike of fear that ran up his spine. He didn't even know what the noise was, or where he was, yet... He was scared? His heart was pounding, he felt his breath growing thin. He rolled his lips as he took a deep breath through hi...

Where was his nose? Henry took his hand and brought it up to his face.

_ He had no nose. _

He lowered his hand back down to the floor and peered back through the mail slot. He felt his eyes widening as he considered the world he saw, the clicking and the dread it brought with it, the lack of a  _ NOSE- _

A shadow then fell into the room, and although Henry couldn't see what made it, what he could see was enough for him to panic.

It was tall. Whatever had been clicking was super tall and extremely thin. Like a street lamp at 3am, it radiated the energy of forbidden air, as if Henry should be at home in his bed asleep rather than seeing its shadow split the room in half. He couldn't make out much from the shadow's silhouette besides what perhaps could be a crown sitting upon one of two horns. The horns even looked familiar, resembling an old character Henry remembered called Bendy, yet he knew that wasn't Bendy. That was... Something else.

The shadow then seemed to walk into a wall, completely disappearing from view, and it took the sounds of the clicking with it.

The floor was now silent. Henry could hear a gentle hum in the very far distance, but besides that it was dead. Quiet.

His hand started scrambling in the dark, searching the door for its knob with shaking hands, and he nearly cheered when his fingers closed around a handle. He turned it, the tumbler rolled out, and Henry burst into the room

"AH!"

He then saw his hands as they flailed in front of him.  _ They were gloves.  _ Large, cartoonish  _ gloves. _

_ "AH!" _

He looked at his arms, his body, his legs. Long, curved limbs came out from his shirt and overalls, and they were coated in a skin-like layer of black ink. He wore a shirt that matched the same black color, but his overalls were that deep gold, sepia color with black pinstripe and ink stains. Even his shoes were cartoony, large and round as they jutted out from under overall legs.

**_"AH!!!"_ **

Henry's voice echoed far too long, and he glanced around in shock.

The ceilings of the "studio" were so high that Henry felt like it was Sunday at church. Despite being wood, the ceilings were somehow vaulted, with massive beams leading up from the floor and running along the boards. These beams then came back down into surprisingly well-carved bases, as if the beams were ancient columns. Looking closer, the tables' feet were just as intricate, carved to be clawed feet, and the wood edges of the table top had been beveled. The molding too was more intricate, carved with details, including the occasional Bendy head. Even with all this detail, the room was still just as small as it had been in the original Joey Drew Studios. It was just different enough to make Henry uncomfortable.

"This is far too fancy to be where I worked," Henry decided, "Then again..."

He looked at his gloved hands.

"... I don't think I'm in New York anymore."

But he looked back up with determination, back down a very close by hallway. He remembered that hallway, and more importantly the door at the end of it.

The exit.

It was right there.

Henry marched down that hallway, passing by many Bendy posters under a tall ceiling, and he reached out to take the doorhandle.

He took it with a firm grip, stopping at the door.

And pulled.

But the door didn't budge.

Henry's brow furrowed. He then kneeled down on the floor and bent over, laying his head against the floor as he peered into the slit between the crack of the door and the floor.

Nothing. It was a black abyss, expanding into nothing. Henry's heart skipped a beat as he sprung back up to his feet.

"... wow," he rotated his arms and stretched his legs, "Haven't felt this young since college. At least I got that going for me."

He turned back around and walked down the hall, much slower this time. He kept himself alert, listening to the silence, all the while his heart still pounding. The only sounds that greeted him were the creaking floor beneath his feet and the far away hum, yet he felt like a new noise could clash against that calm at any second. His heart kept pounding. His fear was overall senseless, yet he trusted it more than anything.

He then reached the room he had first come into and glanced both ways. On one side, he saw a very short hallway that split into two different directions, and on the other he saw the sign that pointed to each of the departments on that floor.

"Let's see," he moseyed on over to the sign, but once more his attention was stolen away by something much more pressing.

On the wall to his right, someone or perhaps something had scrawled a message on to the wall in ink. The blackness of the ink was striking against the oddly bright yellow wallpaper.

**_He won't let us leave._ **

"... that can't be good."

But, the silence persisted. Neither "he" nor "us" seemed to be around, so Henry went exploring.

The first thing he found was a desk that resembled the one he used to work on. Although the desk and chair were more intricate, with the same claw foot feet as the table from before, Henry knew his handwriting and he knew his art. His puffy, gloved fingers traced the back of his chair as he gazed at the desk.

The next thing he found was a small room with nothing but a radio and copious amounts of bacon soup. It was odd, for sure, especially since those bacon soup cans sat back in a bookshelf that was far too tall for Henry, even in his current state.

"I guess even threatening shadows get hungry," he concluded.

Next he found a pair of intricate doors, shut tight and locking the rest of the floor away. They were covered in inky tendrils that both made a frame around the door and curled around a large emblem at the center of the two doors. The emblem was in the shape of Bendy's head, much like the small Bendys on the molding.

From the doors, he continued down the hall. Every door he tried was locked, and he jiggled each of them with a sigh of exasperation. There had to be somewhere he could go! There had to!

He turned around the corner, and then another shortly after, expecting to see even more doors. But no.

He stopped.

Henry found himself standing in the center of a tall doorway, a doorway that led into a much larger room. From what he could see, the space was like a ballroom, with black and white tiled floors and ornate walls, but what sat in the room was much less elegant than its surroundings. It seemed to be a machine, massive and box-like, with huge pipes sticking out from its sides. Said pipes traveled around the room, sticking into the walls and perhaps leading to other parts of those two large doors. The machine even seemed to have some kind of..  _ pool  _ attached to the front of it, and as Henry approached, he realized said pool was full of ink.

Even more surprising was the fact the machine wasn't running. It sat dormant, silent, waiting to be turned back on.

"... turning that on feels bad," Henry decided, "I don't think. I should turn this thing on."

But that's when a loud creak rang out from behind him. Henry spun around, realizing that the sound came from somewhere in the hallway.

"Uh, uh," he searched the ballroom with his eyes, but there were no weapons.

But he couldn't stay there forever. He'd have to go see what that creak was.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Just! Let me know if you wanna see more, it's super important. And thanks for reading if you made it down to here 💕


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